About Me

Friday, March 31, 2017

Some time back I saw a program about Stephen Hawking, the English physicist who
is confined to a wheelchair because of Lou Gehrig's disease, but
whose brain is working perfectly, and who is an extra-ordinary
genius. He wrote A brief history of time, attempting to
explain the origins of the universe. Over fifty years ago he was
diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease and he was told he had at best
two years to live. Today he is still doing ground-breaking work in
physics although the only muscle that he can still move is one of his
cheeks. There is a small sensor beside his cheek, which is attached
to a computer. By moving his cheek he can speak to people and
continue working through his computer. No doubt one of the
reasons why he is still alive is his will to live. He has an
extraordinary determination to keep going.

There is so
much more to being alive than just physical health, although that is
what we all wish for. Many people would consider that life would not
be worth living if you were in the physical state that Stephen
Hawking is in, and yet look at what he has already done.

For a few
years I used to work in a hospital as chaplain in my hometown of
Galway. I often saw people who, having lost the will to live, would
go down-hill very quickly and die. I also saw people who were told
that they would probably not recover, but because they were
absolutely determined to keep going, they would recover, often
completely against the odds. One of the key differences between
those who keep going and those who don’t is something spiritual:
hope. When we have hope we can keep going even against the odds. If
we have no hope, we may not survive even the ordinary.

A few years
ago in housing subdivision called Moyross, in Limerick city—one of
the toughest and most troubled areas of that city—a new group of
Religious have moved in. They are called the Franciscan Friars of the
Renewal, which were started by Fr. Benedict Goreschel in the Bronx,
New York. They live very like the Missionaries of Charity (Mother
Teresa’s order) in extreme poverty. Apparently the area has been
transformed, for the simple reason that they have given the people
there new hope. By moving in there, they have shown those people that
they are worth something and that in itself has given them new hope.

Because we
believe that God wants us to be happy, to live life in all its
fullness, that gives us hope which we are inspired to pass on to
others. Because we have hope we are able to work to promote and
strengthen married life even when it goes wrong; we continue to work
with younger people and encourage them not to give up even when they
have ruined their lives through drugs, or alcohol; we continue to work for
justice and peace often in very difficult circumstances. Our faith in
God gives us hope, which in turn inspires others to keep going. Think
of the hope that Pope Francis has given people by the way he
lives.

In this
beautiful Gospel we hear how Jesus deliberately waited when he heard
that Lazarus was sick, in order to work this miracle before
everyone’s eyes. He wanted to show them something. He wanted to
show them that God has power even over death and that if He allows
people to die that it is not the end. Just as Jesus called Lazarus
out of death, so Jesus will also call us out of death when we die and
we will begin a new and wonderful life with him, if we have chosen
life with God. We make that choice by the way we live.

In bringing
Lazarus back to life, Jesus was helping people to believe in who he
was. He is the one who has power over life and death. He is master of
all things. He was also giving the people hope, showing them that
there is a bigger picture that we do not understand. Death is not the
end. Physical health is not everything either, but having hope is
essential if we are to keep going through the many difficulties that
we continue to face. Our hope in God and the world to come gives us
strength to keep going even when we are suffering, or struggling, or
when everything goes wrong. If we do not have hope we could despair. If
we believe in nothing else apart from this world then it will be
very difficult to keep going when faced with the many difficulties
that we are so often faced with, which don’t seem to have any
solution: situations of injustice that we can do nothing about;
people killed through violence and hatred. If we believe in nothing
else, then how are we supposed to keep going?

In one of his
letters to the Christians in Corinth, which is in modern day Greece, St. Paul
wrote the following: “If our faith in Christ has been for this life
only, then of all people we are the most to be pitied” (1 Cor
15:9). In other words if we think that this life is everything then we have
completely missed the point. But our faith tells us that this life is
only a small part of what is going on and it is so important that we
don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. I am sure that was one
of the reasons why Jesus deliberately waited until Lazarus was dead before he
went to him, so that he could bring him back to life in front of everyone,
so that they would realize that Jesus is Lord of the living and
the dead and all things are in his hands.

“I shall
put my spirit in you, and you will live and I shall resettle you on
your own soil; and you will know that I the Lord have said and done
this.”

Friday, March 24, 2017

I
grew up in the West of Ireland, where the winters can seem endless
because it is so dark for so long. Often it is weeks before we see
the sun, but we know it is there. We know it because we can see the
effects of it for one thing. God is something similar. We do not see
him, but we know He is there, because we see the effects of God’s
presence. We see people continually inspired to do good, even in the
face of strong opposition. We see people willing to suffer to get
justice and peace. You could be cynical and say that is just the
goodness of human nature, but with faith we see something
different. We see the power of God’s spirit at work. What gives
people the strength to die for a good cause? Their faith. God
inspires and gives us the strength to keep going, even when it’s
difficult.

One
of the things that is causing many of us pain at the moment, is the
fact that so many of our younger people seem to have lost their
faith. Parents are continually saying to me: ‘My children won’t
go to church,’ or ‘My children don’t practice anymore; what
should I do?’ Just because they cannot relate to the mass, does not
mean that they don’t have faith, or that they are not searching for
God. Almost everyone searches for God, but perhaps not in a way that
makes sense to us. It is often more a question of them having lost
faith in the Church as an institution than anything else and this is
very understandable, since most of what they are hearing about it is
negative, unattractive and sometimes scandalous. What can we do about
it? To be honest I don’t know. It troubles me greatly and I pray
continually for them and that God will show us what to do. To most of
my generation and younger generations I am a complete mystery as a
priest and sometimes I find that difficult too because all of us want
to be accepted.

Having
said all that, I have no doubt that God is acting in their lives and
will continue to act, for two reasons: firstly, because they are also
his children. He created them and He is more concerned about them
than we are. Secondly because of the thousands of people who are
praying for them, including us. God hears our prayers and God knows
how and when to respond. We may not appear to see anything, but that
does not mean that nothing is happening.

Now
let us turn to this account of Jesus healing a man blind from birth.
The fact that he was blind from birth emphasizes that giving him
sight would be a complete miracle and totally unheard of. Once he is healed he then comes to believe that Jesus is Lord. The miracles
that Jesus worked did more than just heal the person.These miracles were also
pointing to who he was and is. When the man is questioned by the
religious authorities he is not able to explain what happened or how,
but simply that it did happen and that he now believes. He does not
have the official ‘education’ or religious knowledge, to be able
to know the things of God, and yet he comes to believe. On the other
hand the religious leaders of the time had the official education.
They were the experts, and yet they could not and would not recognize
who Jesus was. Perhaps it was partly their religious knowledge which
became an obstacle for them. Because Jesus healed this man on the
Sabbath they concluded that he could not be from God, because that
was their understanding of how God worked. They had a particular
understanding of how God must be, and since Jesus didn’t fit this
picture they concluded he could not be from God. Essentially their
minds were closed and they didn’t want to know. God had to fit into their picture. But God often acts
outside the way we think things should happen. The religious leaders
were confined to a narrow understanding of God. You could say that
they had a blindness of the heart. The blind man, on the other hand,
was physically blind, but he had an openness of heart. Not only did
he come to physically see, but more importantly he came to believe.

We
have a particular understanding of what it means to believe and how
we should express that faith: namely by going to church, praying and
loving our neighbor. This is good and important, but that does not
mean that God can not bring people to faith in a completely different
way as well. The Muslims, Hindus, and many others believe in God too,
but they have a very different understanding than we do. That doesn’t
mean it’s wrong. It is just different.

The
next generation may not understand God in the way we do, but we
should not lose heart about that. God is just as interested in them
as we are. He has created them to be with him in heaven, just like
us. Our job is to go on bearing witness to God by living our
faith as well as we can.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Today
we have the baptism of an infant, Emmet Donato, who
is just four months old. There is nothing like a new baby to give us
hope; the promise of the next generation. The Gospel today is
particularly appropriate for a baptism, where Jesus offers the
Samaritan woman ‘living water’, which can only come from God. But
why baptize a child at all? Why not wait until they are an adult and
what is the importance of Baptism anyway?

Way
back at the beginning we believe that God created everything, the
heavens and the earth, the visible world and the invisible world. It is also worth mentioning that faith and science don’t contradict each
other, they just look at things from a different perspective. Science
looks at how our universe developed, step by step; what exactly happened. Faith asks why it is
there in the first place, why is there anything instead of nothing. The two
most important things that the creation story in Genesis tell us is
that it was God who created and that what God created was
fundamentally good. It also says that the human being was God’s
greatest creation, God’s masterpiece, because we are made in his
image with free will and the ability to love.

We
also understand that somewhere way back at the beginning our first
parents rejected God’s word, rebelled against what He taught them and so
sin entered the world. That was the Fall, which is itself a very
mysterious thing. The problem was that we ourselves could not repair
the damage we had done. The bridge between heaven and earth had now
been broken. So God came among us in the person of Jesus who was
fully human and fully divine, in order to make up for the damage done.
By sacrificing himself for us he reopened the way to heaven, the
possibility of eternal life with God which we had lost. That’s why
Jesus’ coming among us is so important and why Easter is such an
extraordinary feast. It is the feast of our being set free. It is now
possible to go to heaven again.

When
we baptize someone we are saying yes I believe all that God has done
for me and I accept it. I want to be drenched in the life of God.
When you step out into a summer down-pour in Florida you get soaked,
‘baptized’ in the water. That’s what it means. By being
baptized we are saying ‘Let me have it!’ Let me have all that God
has done for me. When we baptize an adult they first have to go through
a time of preparation where they learn about our faith. Only when
they are ready do they receive baptism. If we baptize an infant we do
it on condition that they will be taught their faith as they grow up.
Otherwise it would be hypocrisy.

In
this Gospel Jesus has an unusual encounter with a woman. In the
culture of the time it would have been unthinkable for a Jew to speak
to a Samaritan woman on her own, and even more outrageous to share a
drinking vessel with her. The fact that she was there in the middle
of the day on her own also tells us something. Women would have gone
to the well early in the morning or in the evening in groups and not
with men. Being there on her own at noon indicates that she was not
welcome in her community. She was shunned because of her lifestyle.
But Jesus reaches out to her and offers her ‘the waters of life’.
What is this life? It is life in Christ and all that he is offering to us.
Following his teaching is the path that will lead us to heaven.
Baptizing someone is offering them all that Jesus offered the woman
and also offers us.

We
only want the very best for our children and that is why we baptize them as infants and
immerse them in all that God offers us. As they grow we try and pass
on that same faith and that takes all of us. We bear witness to them by
the way we live. If we do our best to live our faith it will help
them to see how real and important it is too.

If
you only knew what God was offering you and who it was that was
asking you for a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he
would have given you living water.

Saturday, March 11, 2017

A
few years ago I was out with some friends having a drink. There was
an American tourist there, a man about my own age, and he was on his
own. So eventually he joined us and began chatting. He told us he a
bit about himself and his wife and children at home. Then he asked me
if I had any children. So I said ‘No, I am a priest.’ He was not
expecting that reply, but then he said, ‘Yes, Jesus was a good
man.’ I was thinking to myself, ‘You are right, Jesus was a good
man, but he was also much more than that: he was and is the Son of
God.’ That makes a big difference.

Something
that you will come across quite often in discussions on religion in
general is the idea that Jesus is another one of the enlightened
masters, like the Buddha, or Gandhi, or others like that. You will
come across this in what is generally called New Age thinking as
well. He is a prophet and a great teacher and spiritual leader, but
that is it. However, for us it can not stop there. We believe that he
is a human being, yes, but also fully divine. He is God, revealed to
us in human flesh. If this is not true, then we should not be here.
And if this is not true then what we do here in the mass is idolatry,
because it would mean that we claim that this same Jesus the Son of
God becomes present in the form of bread and wine. In a way it is no
wonder that many other religions think what we do is completely
crazy. It is hard to blame them. But Jesus himself claimed he
was the Son of God. Either Jesus was a liar, he was mad, or what he
said was true. We believe that what he said was true, that he is the
Son of God, fully human and fully divine.

This
vision that the three Apostles Peter, James and John were granted on
the mountain tells us a lot. These three Apostles seem to have been
given a more intense training than the others. The Gospels tell us
that on three different occasions Jesus allowed only them to go with
him. Once was when he brought back to life the 12 year old girl,
Jairus’ daughter. He only allowed her parents and Peter, James and
John to be there. The other time was in the Garden of Gethsemane when
he allowed them to see up close the fear and terror that he went
through, knowing what was about to happen to him. He sweated blood,
which is a real medical condition in extreme stress.

Why
were they given this vision? It was for their benefit, to leave them
in no doubt that Jesus was not just another prophet, even if a great
prophet. He was the one seen in blinding glory, but then they heard
this voice from the cloud saying ‘This is my Son the beloved...
listen to him.’ It was another way of telling them, ‘Do not be in
any doubt as to who he is. Listen to him.’ He is the only one whose
voice we need to listen to. We are constantly being called in
different directions. Different voices tell us what to believe, where
to go. ‘Don’t listen to the Church because it is corrupt. The
teachings of Christ are not real’, etc. But the Father says,
‘Listen to him’.

Why
did these other two men, Moses and Elijah, appear with Jesus? Moses
represented the Ten Commandments, which were known as the Law. This
was the law they were to follow. Elijah represented the Prophets. The
prophets were the ones whom God sent to point people back in the
right direction. The Jewish people believed that if they followed the
teachings of the Law and the Prophets, that was their path to heaven.
Now Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus which was a sign that Jesus
was now the new path to heaven. All of us will go to heaven through
what Jesus has done for us. He is the new path to heaven, the
fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.

Peter,
James and John were also being strengthened for the passion which was
to happen right after this event and in spite of being granted this
vision, they fled when Jesus was tortured and killed. If it was that
difficult for them, it is not surprising that we can find it
difficult too, and that we doubt and wonder are we all daft to
believe in these things. But that is why God granted them this vision
of Jesus in his glory, which must have been quite terrifying at the
time. God allowed them to see this so that afterwards they would
regain their strength and courage. They saw Jesus in glory to show
them who he was/is and also this is to remind us that this is how we
will see him when we die.

We
too need the same strength and courage, especially when we are all
the time being told of how foolish it is to believe all this stuff
and that we should really get with the times. The Church is out of
date, corrupt, etc. If Jesus is just a man, or a prophet, then what
we do here is wrong, in fact it would be blasphemy. But if Jesus is
the Son of God, which we believe he is, then what happens in each
mass is the most extraordinary miracle in the world and it is also
the most incredible privilege for us to be able to receive his body
and blood in each mass. Who could even think up such an idea as this
except God? No human would try to convince other humans of something
so outrageous. Jesus told us to repeat this ritual this ritual in his
memory and so we do, so that we could have him with us continually in
a beautiful way, where we can actually receive him into our own
bodies. We did not make it up.

In
spite of the difficulty at times to believe and all the confusion
that is around us, remember this event on the mountain and the voice
that the Apostles heard:

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Since I was ordained a
priest almost 19 years ago, one of the temptations for me has been to
wish that God would do more spectacular things through me, which
would convince people of the reality of God. I believe that God does
extraordinary things through the priesthood, above all becoming present
in each mass when the bread and wine becomes the Body and Blood of
Christ, but as you know it happens in a very humble and hidden way.
It is not spectacular and if you don’t believe in it, then it just
seems to be some kind of a strange religious ritual. So why doesn’t
God do something more spectacular every once in a while to help us
believe?

The account of Jesus’
temptations in the wilderness is really the explanation as to why God
doesn’t do more signs and wonders to convince us of
his presence. This is an extraordinary story because it must have
come directly from Jesus himself, since no one was with him during
this time of temptation. At some stage he must have told his apostles
what happened there and what he had to go through.

Jesus was about to embark
on his public campaign to teach people about God and to win people
over for God. Now for any campaign you must choose the weapons you
are going to use. Jesus must have been aware that he had
extraordinary powers, or otherwise Satan wouldn’t have tempted him
to use them. There would be no point in tempting any of us to throw
ourselves down from a great height or to turn stones into bread,
because we couldn’t do it anyway. So this must have been a very
real temptation for Jesus, to misuse his power.

The first thing he was
tempted with was to find satisfaction in material things. ‘Give
people the material things that they want and they will love you.’
In this case it was bread to a man who was starving. But Jesus said,
‘No. Man does not live on bread alone.’ The human being is
not satisfied by material things. Jesus was saying, ‘I am not going
to try and win people over by offering them just what they want.’
We are much deeper than that and we can only be fully satisfied by
God because we are spiritual and not just physical.

The second temptation that
Jesus was presented with was to work signs and wonders for the
people. ‘Throw yourself down from the temple since God will save
you.’ If he started doing this then no doubt he would have
thousands of followers in no time, but Jesus also rejected this,
because he knew that the way he had to take was the way of service
and the way of the cross, which would win people over heart by heart.
You cannot buy love, as you know, and that is why Jesus chose the
more humble way, and left it open to us to see what God offers us and
then to freely choose to follow him or not.

The third temptation was
to compromise with evil. This is a huge temptation for most people.
When you hear people say ‘The Church needs to get with the times’
this is often what they mean. The Church needs to ‘adapt’
(compromise) some of its teachings to the more difficult moral
demands of our age. It is always a temptation for me as a priest to
water down the teachings of God so that they are easier to swallow.
But that is not what we are asked to do and when Jesus was tempted
this way he rejected it outright. He was being tempted to compromise
with evil just a little bit, so that it would be easier for people to
be convinced. But right is right and wrong is wrong. We must not
compromise on the ways of God. Yes it is more difficult, but if it is
the truth then it is better to struggle with it than to try and
change it to suit ourselves. The teachings of God don’t need to
change; we are the ones who need to change.

In many ways I would still
love it if God worked spectacular signs and wonders now, so that
people would be easily and quickly convinced, but that is not how God
works, and I think it is good to remember that, especially when we
live in times of great change when God often seems to be very quiet.
The Lord knows what He is doing and He puts it to us continually to
follow him freely. No one is going to force us.